Weekly Update: January 22 - 28, 2018

Jan 27, 2018

Forward. Every single day is a chance to move closer to the desired destination. If I don’t take action today, that’s going to diminish the chance that I reach my goal tomorrow, and assure that I won’t reach it today. Right now, this moment that’s passing, is gone as soon as I press the key on my keyboard. You’re reading this at some point in my future, which has now became your present. Welcome to now. If everything has gone as planned, I’ve been putting my time to use. Slowly, but surely, constantly moving forward.

I read a lot this week. Most of it had nothing to do with software development, but I feel like I learned a lot of things that will have a profound effect on my wellbeing. First of all, I finished Waking Up by Sam Harris. It’s a book about spirituality through the lens of meditation and conscienceness. It’s a fascinating read, one that can serve as a gateway to many interesting ideas. Once I was done with Waking Up it was time to start 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson. I’ve been waiting for this book to come out for months. It’s finally here and I’m really enjoying it. There’s a ton about psychology, human nature, biology, and so much more.

I got back into React a little bit this week by viewing Redux Fundamentals on Pluralsight. It was great review of React and Redux. The course is probably the best treatment of Redux I’ve seen. There was even a section where you build out a simplified version of redux by hand. Nothing can demonstrate the concepts of a system better than building it yourself.

Currents

On the Next…

I want to start reading the books listed here on “A Software Developer’s Reading List”. This list was orginally written in 2014 and it covers a lot of ground. I’ve read a few of the books already (Clean Code, Refactoring, The Lean Startup) and would like to knock off a few of these title before the year is over. Even if I only read 15-25 pages a day I could easily finish five of these books.

Dev-eryday

Dev-every is a personal project created by Joshua Niederer to aid in becoming a better software developer. The concept is to develop myself and my skills every day. This site serves to log my efforts and to share knowledge, creations, insights, and whatever else I discover along the way.